One of them learned technology hundreds of feet underwater in a submarine; another started his own consulting business while still in college. To say the 2013 Insurance IT All-Stars is an eclectic group is no understatement.

This is the seventh edition of the all-stars and this year's group of five insurance IT leaders has made its marks with a variety of companies. We asked them what scares them about the future and also what excites them and one theme was shared by all—technology offers immense challenges for what lies ahead, but also great opportunity not only for themselves, but for the industry as a whole.

The 2013 All-Stars include: Suren Gupta, executive vice president, Allstate Technology and Operations; Peter Settel, senior vice president and CIO of Homesite insurance; David Lawless. executive vice president and chief administrative officer, Magna Carta Companies; Tracey Berg, vice president and CIO, West Bend Mutual Insurance; and Dan Colarusso, senior vice president, operations, and COO, Cypress Insurance.

Suren Gupta

As executive vice president, technology and operations for Allstate Insurance and a member of Allstate's senior leadership team, Suren Gupta explains that his initial career goal was not to be a technologist, but rather to work on the business side. He came to realize, though, that technology is indispensable for business people.

“Tom Wilson (CEO and chairman of Allstate) says it best,” says Gupta. “Everyone's a business person—some happen to know technology more than others.”

Gupta is responsible for enterprise-wide technology strategy, network infrastructure, enterprise applications, and technology-related governance, security, and compliance activities for Allstate. He also directly supports the Allstate Protection president, leading all aspects of Allstate Protection technology, and agency and customer support functions. In addition, Gupta is responsible for the integration of shared service functions.

Gupta has had several mentors throughout his career. On his first job, he was taught the importance of organizing his thoughts and the key concepts he needed to get across when developing and delivering a presentation. As the years passed, Gupta learned the importance of strategy, planning, execution, and operational excellence. He continues to incorporate these lessons today, particularly when assembling the managers who work with him.

 “We need leaders that are focused on customer needs while empowering their employees and continually improving,” he says. “All of that is balanced with accountability. It's critical that we deliver the capabilities our customers desire and support our employees so they can deliver their best work. I look for leaders who will take personal responsibility for ensuring these things happen.”

Gupta joined Allstate in 2011, bringing leadership, information technology, operations, and sales experience to the insurer. Since then, he has been instrumental in enhancing delivery capabilities and focusing on innovation. He also has deployed a three-year plan and roadmap, ensuring a clear technology and operations direction that accounts for trends in the industry and facilitates long-term decision-making.

“What I'm most proud of is bringing technology and operations closer to the business,” he says. “It used to be that the business areas told technology and operations what they needed and we delivered it.  But now, with the importance of technology in all industries, we've adopted a balanced approach, incorporating both strategy driven by the business and strategy driven by technology. That enables us to bring technology solutions to the business that will drive innovative support of our customers.”

Nothing really surprises Gupta when it comes to technology anymore.

“History tells us that technology will continually evolve and people will dream up new ideas that will revolutionize the industry,” he says. “We›re at a time where something amazing is always right around the corner.  The key is staying up to speed on the new advances and even the early thinking to be ready to capitalize on the opportunity and deliver for your customers.”

Staying open to new ideas is why Gupta believes carriers such as Allstate have placed such great emphasis on technology.

“As an information and data company, technology is at the center of how we service our customer—determine ratings, conduct underwriting activities, and provide access through mobile and the Internet,” he says. “Allstate greatly values technology and its capabilities.”

Being open is also why Gupta doesn't worry about the future.

“I see many more opportunities in front of us,” he says. “If we focus on protecting customers and their assets by utilizing the most current technology capabilities, we'll continue to add the value they've come to expect from us.”

Gupta is excited about the future because he feels the evolution of technology will continue to showcase amazing ways companies can help customers stay safe, healthy, and financially stable.  

“We're already doing that for our auto customers with the DriveWise product; this device provides customers information about their driving, giving them the opportunity for bigger discounts with improved driving habits,” he says.

Peter Settel

Peter Settel doesn't believe there's been a time since the Internet first hit its stride where we've witnessed so much technology innovation and opportunity moving in so many directions simultaneously.

“When you had the dot-com movement there were incredible changes in so many directions so quickly,” says Settel, senior vice president and CIO of Homesite Insurance. “It's different now, but you are seeing the phenomenon of amazing and important things happening simultaneously and in many different directions. You need to be close to the action because just as the dot-com era rose and then descended, nobody can ignore the lasting impact of the Internet. This is an important time and some amazing things will pop up. You will want to be very close to that action. It's a pretty amazing time right now.

Still, Settel knows there are limits to how quickly things are going to change even if the technology is in place and if there is a rationale for using that technology. For insurance companies, that involves the ability to handle massive volumes of data and then being able to make use of that data for product, pricing or improved customer experience.

“There are limits to how quickly you can produce change within an organization,” says Settel. “Technology can enable you to move at a quicker pace, but it is our ability to use that appropriately, effectively, and safely that will be the constraint. There may also be regulatory constraints as well. While we are at a time of amazing opportunity and change, we want to make sure we are working in a proven manner and mindful this is all new. We don't want to do things that will create more risk.”

In Homesite's early stages as a start-up company, Settel was interested in putting together a staff with strong technical skills, passion, a level of creativity, and problem solving.

“To me that was a key to growing quickly and building a strong organization,” he says. “That has to be at the nucleus.”

But Settel also contends strong management is needed to build a fully-formed organization where people can be successful.

“If there is just a bunch of hard chargers, it's hard to build an organization,” he says. “We have a team structure where people can come in and be successful.”

Homesite's plan was to grow quickly, so Settel and his IT staff set out to take three steps to establish the back office—automate, outsource, and simplify.

“We didn't want to be burdened by outgrowing the back office, which becomes very labor-intensive and a strain on middle and senior management,” he says. “You want to focus on other things. We started from nothing and built out a back office infrastructure with in-house technologies, integration between packaged software, and working closely with BPO partners based on how they fit within the infrastructure.”

Homesite continues to leverage that strategy to achieve a cost advantage within the industry.

“We would not have been able to grow as quickly as we did if we didn't go down that path,” says Settel. “It became a pretty exciting project. Early on, when we built out our full web quote-bind-issue capability, we were first in the industry for homeowners insurance.”

Being able to start out without a legacy system was a huge advantage for Homesite and the company placed its bets on the Internet becoming a significant part of the insurance business.

“In 2001 we started writing through that system and by 2005-07 as the Internet exploded for personal lines, we were positioned to have the basic capabilities to grow in that channel,” says Settel. “All the time we are improving, but the basic logical architecture hasn't changed in the decade-plus since we laid it out.”

Settel believes legacy systems have held back many insurance carriers from doing some of the things modern technology has made possible.

“In personal lines, companies are in unison saying they have to have the technology to support the requirements of the consumer in that channel, they have to be multi-channel, they have to have time to market, and they have to have great customer experience imbedded in their systems,” he says. “If you want to get all of the advantages of multi-channel distribution and direct to consumer, you have to be willing to make the investments.”

Settel also believes the personnel talent in the industry is great, whether it be in marketing, actuarial departments, or analytics.

“That environment has translated into pretty good technology,” he says. “I'm pretty bullish on insurance being seen not as a technology laggard compared to other industries, but as an industry hitting its stride and starting to see the need for seamless integration between the user experience and marketing as a competitive advantage. When you look at the auto insurance industry you can see the dividing line between companies that embraced that and companies that have not.”

One of the most exciting thing about the future for Settel is creating customer experience that is substantially better than anything the industry has seen in the past.

“Customers are going to judge us not based on who is the best insurance company or who creates the best experience, but if customers are working with Google products, or Apple products, or Amazon products. They are going to look at which companies are creating the best customer experience overall,” he says.

Settel believes the power is shifting to the consumer, but he also acknowledges the industry is in a position to create fantastic customer experiences, whether it is in sales, how customers pay their bill or how a claim is settled.

“As that power shifts to the consumer and their ability to select the companies they want to work with, I think [insurers] will benefit,” he says. “As you take the intermediary out and work directly with the consumer, you have to imbed into the technology, not just a fantastic customer experience, but the pricing sophistication and granularity in your pricing plan and the controls in place to put that out directly to the consumer and expect to get the result that you want.”

Settel is particularly mindful of the importance of enterprise architecture to support business agility, and the need to view mobile as a new channel—not a replacement to an existing channel and not as a copy-and-paste opportunity to simply re-use technology and business processes with some new requirements. 

“In our view, the copy-and-paste approach is often tempting but not a path to success,” he says. “It was not a path to success as companies moved (and still move) to online sales and service. The challenges related to ensuring data accuracy, maximizing pricing sophistication, optimizing expense advantage while meeting extremely complicated customer expectations as so much power shifts to the consumer are magnified with mobile.  We're excited by the opportunity to be leaders in creating mobile solutions, but we also fully recognize the need for significantly new investments not only within IT but also broadly within the organization.” 

David Lawless

In all the jobs that David Lawless has held in his life—from being a contract employee working on IBM systems to his current job as chief administrative officer for Magna Carta Companies—one thing among them all remains in common: He likes to improve efficiency and quality by developing a business and technology strategy with his team.

“I've done a lot of different things, which has been interesting for me, but I most enjoy solving problems,” he says.

For Lawless, problem solving involves understanding the basic nature of each business goal and coming up with the best solution to improve operations. That is what he expects of his employees as well.